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Did some experimenting with night photography, no flash. We were at the park under the field lights. I was in Shutter Speed Priority and trying various shutter speeds. Took about 100 pictures. Most were too dark. But when I slowed the shutter down to about 1/500th and panned with the subject, a few were salvageable with some Elements work. There is plenty of noise in the picture, but the fact that any came out is surprising. Here's the best one. I've turned on the camera data on Webshots if any of you would like the other particulars.

looks like you're getting you're teeth into the new 'limits' of the Nikon, and I can see you're being rewarded for your efforts. I'm one of those photographers that ends up starting out beyond whats 'acceptable' and then I work backward from there. Rarely do I get the chance to work in environments that are ideal, so really knowing what the tool will do is essential to me.

Hope I'm not out of line on the next bit "godfather"

If I may throw an observation into the mix, it sounds like the panning idea is being introduced by you to 'solve a problem', have you ever taken it to the point of making it a feature? I know it's a very personal thing as to what you like and don't, but with sports kites as the subject I personally think a little movement can give the end product a little extra 'emotion' to the shot. It does mean bringing into play a little 'chaos' that needs to be managed, but I think that there can be a middle ground where a balance can be struck between info and emotion.

Here's a panned shot I took of 'Brightlights' Pink QPro on a resent trip to 'Wilsons Prom', being that we got there at sunset I'll say there were some 'issues with light', but that said I think this shot, to me at least, shows exactly how the flying session looked (we had to use torches to find our way back to the car) Although not technically a 'perfect' shot, I think there's something extra in it because of that. But hey, some people will probably say... "Not bad, pity about the blurry stuff..."

Panning is something I could not really afford to do with my previous cameras. The 900s, 3800, and the 8080 just weren't fast enough in their metering to take pictures of moving kites. Nor do I trust myself in full Manual Mode in a rapidly changing environment of kite flying. The whole "hold it right there" I developed for kites was based on the limitations of my cameras. Now, with a much larger sensor, I am reintroducing myself to panning.

I use to shoot film with a 300mm f/4 prime lens and panning was a regular part of the process, particularly with race cars.

Now, it's time to get away from Auto Mode and relearn what I use to do decades ago.

Please continue to make inputs. All constructive inputs are read with thanks.

You also provided a couple of titbits of info I'm going to expand on....

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"weren't fast enough in their metering to take pictures of moving kites. Nor do I trust myself in full Manual Mode"

Although these cameras will throw 400 features at you under the guise of 'simplicity', if I was someone who has the 'knowledge' of the building blocks of a shot (sensor sensitivity/metering/speed/aperture/DOF) then I would recommend that you follow you gut instinct on this and ignore most of them

I almost shoot exclusively on manual, even though my camera promises to do as good if not better job than me(well thats what the brochure said). If I know what i want as an end product then it's just a matter of setting the 2 numbers I want most and let the other come to the party (say ISO and Shutter speed, and let aperture stay changeable. Have a quick practice with the settings before you start and if all good then you are then only a quick 1 or 2 clicks L or R to make any subtle changes required). (Oh, and there's at least a stop either way in post processing if you shoot in RAW)

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Now, it's time to get away from Auto Mode and relearn what I use to do decades ago.

That sounds like a far more enjoyable path, and I wouldn't even say relearn, more maybe just 'remember' And most importantly, apply this with confidence (this is the toughest part I find, I'm constantly shoring up my ever eroding confidence that I know more than the 'super brained camera'. But then all I need to do is put the camera back into 'program' take a few shots and then look at the results, yeah I was right, the camera has no idea that I was trying to get a great shot of a kite, why don't they just put a 'kite' mode in them??? )

For me it falls into the area of 'Kaizen'- Small, almost insignificant, continuous and on going improvements, for ever... This is the counter position to 'making big dramatic changes'....

My photography development has very much been a journey of Kaizen. and I suppose so to has my kite flying

Do you set Focus? I know you said Manual, but was wondering about the focusing. Right now the 5000 is set so that: I set shutter speedCamera sets Focus first, Aperture 2nd on ISO 200, floats ISO upward once max aperture is achieved.

Personally with focus I take it as it comes, On the 70-200 I use I have become adept at MF but if I see the apertures are below 5.6 then i will sometimes try out AF in the servo mode (tracking focus).

Over 5.6 I'll leave it in MF and therefore not have to suffer from the camera grabbing a B/G detail at the wrong time. If I'm shooting AF with moving objects I will reduce the number of AF sensors that are active to help prevent it happening as well.

With a wide lens because of the inherent DOF thats there then it's MF 99% of the time.

So all up, probably a 70/30 split on MF/AF

The only thing that requires 'retraining' is to have the directions of rotation down pat. So which way for closer and which way for further away, I'd imagine just like how you drove the 300 f4 in the 'olden days'

Thanks for digging up the shot of the 'Hammer (?)', thats what I'm talking about, it's a great shot of the kite but you also get a little 'pepper' with it as well.

One important consideration when panning is your image stabilization, you really should turn it off. The system will see the motion of the camera as shake and attempt to correct for it. If your panning at anything but a very slow speed you will be moving the camera intentionally much further then the stabilization can compensate for and it will therefore introduce blurr into the shot that you did not intend. The same holds true when using the camera on a tripod, turn it off, the shutter or even the noise generates a small amount of movement that the stabilization system sees and tries to correct for, often too much and thus introduces blur, you get a better shot on a tripod with it off.

One of the first lessons in sports photography is how to capture motion, two ways to get that, hold the camera still and blur the subject or pan with the subject and blur the background. You need to refrain from the impulse to go to a fast shutter speed, everything is static and motionless if you do that.

I shot motorcycle races with a fully manual camera, it's easy to pre-focus and set exposures, I would find my position and the shot I wanted then set the exposure, focus and zoom for that area then start up the track and pan with the rider until he was in position and click. I sold nearly every shot I took with this method since, unlike the other photographer, in my shots you saw the face, you saw the eyes, much better then then "That's my son, he's number 11b".

Logged

"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see" John W Lennon

"People do not quit playing because they grow old, they grow old because they quit playing" George Bernard Shaw

Oooooh very cool!!!! I think that Sam - indigo_wolf is going to like those pix!!!!

Moi? Mostly I think I am tickled by the fact that the perspective makes the kite look huge (above and beyond the fact that it is 11 meters).

Weird they things that catch your eye. It looks like the kite just launched and the cells are still in the process of inflating. Either that or the winds were very light that evening....right at the edge of what the Neo's closed cells are happy with.

Nice that you were able to recover the detail of the people in the background.

having been there i can tell you the wind was 1-3ish mph. there were sul's being flown.

john, exposure doesn't need to be set for every shot. since the camera has no idea what it's going to be taking a picture of when you depress the shutter it can only evaluate what it sees at the time. if i showed you 10 photos and 9 of them were daytime shots and asked you as a human to guess the 10th you'd say "a day time shot", but the camera being dumb would say "i dunno, give me a preview and i'll tell ya". so for the camera the preview of what's coming next wasn't the previous 9 pictures, but the time it takes to "setup" the shot after you've pressed the shutter.

what i'm getting at here is exposure is a 'set it and forget it' until the lighting changes, not the subject.

shooting deliberately you can make better decisions than the camera, but the camera on auto will always outdo you on the "oh sh!%" pictures like the one below.

I'd been shooting earlier and in days before at 1/2000, which seemed to take care of any blur when shooting kites one-handed.

I started with 1/1000 for the evening shots, always concerned about blur with the longer lens. I'm sure I'll venture down to slower speeds as my confidence builds. And I was a bit fooled in review mode as the picture on the screen is backlit and amplified. I was expecting brighter pictures when I got back home. Next time I shoot at night, slower speeds will be experimented with.

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